


Watch Out, Boy, She’ll Chew You Up

by fiveyaaas



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: (like the third chapter), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Power Swap, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Eventual Smut, F/M, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, Not Canon Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Power Swap, Role Reversal, Season/Series 01, title taken from the lyrics of maneater
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:34:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29569692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyaaas/pseuds/fiveyaaas
Summary: She could handle this. She’d handled being a soldier for Reginald. She’d handled surviving alone for years. She’d handled being an assassin. But she saw that look in his eyes as he cleaned the blood from her arm, and she knew this would be much more difficult.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Kudos: 9





	Watch Out, Boy, She’ll Chew You Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JjdoggieS](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JjdoggieS/gifts).



> This is for [JjdoggieS](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JjdoggieS/pseuds/JjdoggieS), who agreed to a few fic exchanges with me! I love her work so much, and I am so excited to see the fics she’s going to be writing for me in return!!! 
> 
> So, this fic is just going to cover season one, but their problems will resolve by the end of this! Because it’s a role swap and power swap, a lot of the reasons for why certain events happen are changed! There will still be an apocalypse plot, but it’ll be handled a lot differently. Also, this will be Five and Vanya-centric, as they will be working together to solve the apocalypse. Please note, too, that Five’s name in this is Seven, and not to confuse Seven with Vanya, though I’m pretty sure it’s always clear when you’re reading! Hopefully!

“You’re hurt,” he said, eyes frantically searching her bloodied arm. She opened her mouth, ready to reassure him that he was fine, but then he was scampering away, likely to grab some alcohol and cotton balls. While some kids were learning the 50 states and capitals, he’d been learning how to stitch up cuts, in case more than one of them had gotten hurt and one person had more minor injuries. 

When he came back, eyes flashing with concern, she remembered that she’d once had his number. Reginald had switched their numbers when his powers never manifested. Only when she’d read his book had she realized he  _ never  _ took a real name. Vanya had not let anybody call her Five when she’d joined the Commission, and she couldn’t help but wonder why he’d never agreed to the name he’d been given, Alexander. Though, to be fair, she couldn’t really picture him with that name, either. 

He reached out, a cloth in his hand, and commanded, “Please give me your arm, V.”

She could handle this. She’d handled being a soldier for Reginald. She’d handled surviving alone for years. She’d handled being an assassin. But she saw that look in his eyes as he cleaned the blood from her arm, and she knew this would be _much_ more difficult.

“Where were you?” From the looks of his apartment, he’d kept studying math and science throughout the years. A letter on his coffee table read,  _ Dr. Seven Hargreeves.  _ She wondered what career he’d taken, what his doctorate was in. “You’ve been gone for seventeen years.”

“Longer than that,” she mumbled, shoving a gray strand of hair behind her ear self-consciously. She was only 58, but she still felt old. 

“Time can do that.” He shrugged. “Were our theories off, I suppose?”

“Yeah.” 

She didn’t have to say anything more; he understood. They both knew the grave nature of her powers, both having spent many hours trying to figure out the scope of them. 

“I wish you had taken me,” he said, brows furrowing. He sterilized his suturing kit quickly. “You _could_ go to an actual hospital.”

“Would be dangerous.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, someone’s after me.”

A smirk. “Sounds about right. What’s with the face you’re giving me?”

“The world’s about to end,” she blurted, and Seven looked up in shock. “I… I have to stop it. There’s not a lot of time… less than two months.”

“What caused it, V?” She wondered for a second why he hadn’t taken Five back after she left. There wouldn’t really have been any purpose. He probably didn’t care about it, though, considering he’d never cared about what he was called. Names didn’t hold significance to him the way they did to her. “How do we stop it?”

_ We.  _ He’d said,  _ ‘We.’  _

A grateful huff of breath escaped her, deeply happy that he was willing to work with her on this. She couldn’t imagine being alone any longer. “I don’t know  _ how _ it happened is the problem, just when it happens.”

“We’ll figure it out.” His voice held no disbelief and no worry; she needed his help and he wanted to help her. She couldn’t help but wonder what she would do if the situation were reversed, and then she felt a sense of guilt, feeling like maybe he was more loyal of a friend than her. “I’ll call off work—”

“Don’t feel like you have to,” she hastened to say, her stomach flipping. “I know that… I mean, you _have_ to be busy.”

He shrugged. “I own the company.”

“What… what do you do?”

“Biomedicine. Primarily it’s just a bunch of laboratory research.”

That was actually... wonderful. “Do you happen to know anything about the company  _ Meritech?” _

“Yeah… they’re super shady. I don’t interact with anybody from there… Why do you want to know?”

She pulled the eye from her pocket, not concerned about grossing him out. He would look at it with a scientist’s eyes, likely. “Basically the only clue I have is this glass eye, from there.”

Seven studied it with a critical eye, turning it over in his finger. “There’s dried blood in a few places. I could run DNA on it, figure out who it belongs to.”

“How will you be able to make a match with somebody on it?”

He raised a brow. “How do you _ think  _ I would find it?”

She was pretty sure he was implying that he was going to hack into a few hospitals or government databases. Though she could feel a slight shiver crawl up her back at the fact that he was willing to do that with very little prompting, she couldn’t precisely judge him. Vanya  _ was  _ an assassin after all. 

“You’re really okay with doing that for me?”

“‘Course I am. Anything for my best friend. Plus, if the world is really going to end… well, I feel like it’s okay to do a few illegal things in that case.”

“Do you actually believe me?”

His hands gripped her arm, the one that hadn’t been bleeding, “You wouldn’t lie about that, Vanya, and we’ve been raised all of our lives to prepare for the apocalypse. It makes sense.”

He huffed out a breath when her arms wrapped around him, embracing him tightly. Then, he was hugging her back. “I missed you so much,” he murmured. “I waited everyday for you, you know. Was… was the apocalypse the reason you couldn’t come back?”

“Among other things.” All of the faces of the people she had killed flashed before her eyes, and she wished that she could blink away from him, imagining leaving him behind forever. Meeting his eyes after what she’d done felt wrong somehow, like she was undeserving of it. Of course, leaving him again would only make that guilt worse, knowing that he’d waited for her for years. “I’m really sorry, Seven.”

Seven pulled away, narrowing his eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“I…” She blinked away tears. “There’s a lot of things I’m not telling you, I suppose.”

He tugged at a gray strand of hair, and she could feel her heart pounding, wondering if he was thinking about her age, how different she looked. She couldn’t really say  _ why  _ her thoughts had gone there. Well, okay, she  _ could,  _ but she didn’t have time to think—

He kissed her. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Updates will happen when they happen!💕


End file.
